Does your character say the right thing – but it’s understood the wrong way? Or takes something well-meaning in the wrong spirit?
I was given a great lesson in writing dialogue recently. It all started with me being upset by some responses I received to a piece of news I shared with family and friends.
The news was that my husband had been diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer. It may sound strange that this should be an occasion to gain insights into writing dialogue but, hey, sometimes you have to find small comforts wherever you can.
“Oh, that’s the one that doesn’t amount to much, isn’t it?”
“What a nuisance.”
“But it’s a given that people don’t die of it.”
“Oh yes, I’ve dozens of friends who’ve had it. That was years ago and they’re all fine.”
I got very upset. I felt they were brushing this nasty, threatening disease off as a simple inconvenience, like a sore throat or a headache or the flu. No, my husband said, they’re just trying to be comforting.
Words – those slippery things! One person can use words to mean one thing while another person might understand them in quite another way. Continue reading
I liked to make sure my little dog Brandy walked on several different surfaces every day – grass, packed earth, tarmac, mud, gravel… Needless to say, people thought I was nuts but I felt the sensory stimulation would keep him lively and perky. He did live to eighteen!
I have so many stories waiting to be finished. Every time one pops into my mind, I drop the story I’m working on and veer off and go search among my folders, then find yet another one that I’d forgotten about but which really should be completed. It’s so easy to be distracted.
Sometimes characters appear complete with full backstory. More often they don’t. Just as in real life, a writer has to hang around to see beyond first impressions.
I am so pleased to have my story “
Susi Lovell 